How I learnt to cook

The dog-eared and much used, Good Housekeeping’s Children’s Cook Book.

Basic but necessary recipes…

Step by step how to make tea and coffee…

The formative recipe for my future culinary career.

It doesn’t exactly look ‘al dente’ does it?

I always comb my hair before I cook. Not.

I had a little record player like this in red, bought with my ‘National’ savings…16 pounds from Woolworths.

When I was four years old I had two revelatory experiences; the first was that I realised I was shit-hot at ‘colouring in’, leading to a love affair with the visual arts. The second was when our class got to make Chocolate Butterfly Cakes. I remember the feeling of joy and accomplishment at producing something so clever (cutting the top off and making it into ‘wings’) and delicious. I took my chocolate butterfly cake home to show my mum. The little cake was shared between the five in our family.

I developed an obsession with making cakes; getting up early before nursery school, to make mixes with flour, butter and sugar. This was halted rather rudely when I put the mix into a red plastic bowl which dripped all over the hot oven. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was no longer allowed to fly solo on the cake-making front.

I continued to cook as a child and as a teenager. From my Saturday job in WH Smiths I reserved a part of my wages to buy the million-part series cooking magazine ‘Supercook’. I made a Sunday lunch for the family, after three months into the subscription, from Supercook recipes; everything began with ‘C’: Cabbage, Chestnut stuffing, Chicken, Chocolate mousse.

Unfortunately my culinary education remained incomplete as, turning into a rebellious teenager, I just stopped turning up to my Saturday job, so I could only cook dishes up till the letter ‘R’.

It’s taken me a while to learn recipes from the rest of the alphabet. I really do need a copy of the Larousse Gastronomique.

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Oh yes, Supercook! do you know I still have the entire hard back book set. And still use two recipes: the brownies (cakier than usual brownies, I like them just as tray back chocolate cakes) and the Barbecued Ribs.

I learnt to cook from the Cordon Bleu magazines, which, like you, I saved up for each week. I wish I still had them really just for their retro value 🙂

I had my Supercook collection up to the letter R until about a year ago but I realised they were covered in booklice so had to chuck!The photography in Supercook was so 70s, all brown earthenware and glycerine painted on the food to make it look shiny…

Never done a cooking lesson in my life. I mostly learnt by a) eatingb) sitting around in the kitchen's of the mother's of the different French boyfriends I have had and watching closely.Yes I have fucked A LOT of Frenchmen.c) from my mum and Italian great grandmother d)not at all from my English grandmother who was the world's worst cook (would put ketchup on spaghetti yuk)d) Videojug

Well Neil, you've only got yourself to blame for being hooked on that atomic cuisine or whatever that new fangled stuff is called…personally I would have spent the money on a bag full of fizzy liquorice not monster munch.Shuna of eggbeater fame has strong feelings about catering college/cooking courses. Personally I think there is nothing like repetition/working in a kitchen for long hours but culinary school can certainly help!